'65 Dart Wagon J.W. Speaker 8700 Install

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mammlouk

mammlouk

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Last night I needed a small task to do so I felt like I did something with the car for the day. Since my new headlamps were sitting in boxes in the garage and the sun had already gone down I thought it would be an excellent choice to cross that item off my list.

I got the sylvania lamp out with no issues. Then I removed the headlight bucket/mounting ring. Everything was moving along quickly and smoothly. Then I tried to fit the new headlamp into the bucket... The heatsink caught against the metal in the back. I thought to myself "No big deal I'll just use my trusty combination pliers to flare the rim." Once that was done I found that the heatsink for the new lamp was still catching elsewhere. Long story short I ended up having to cut off nearly half of the bucket to get that thing in. This is no simple task when you can't find your tin snips and you don't have a Dremel. Also it was late, so the noise of cutting with a dremel might have been problematic.

I've tried searching and am wondering if I missed this critical information in one of the threads around here. I can't seem to find it mentioned, though it probably is. I'll be stopping to pick up a Dremel tonight to clean up the mess I made last night and cut the other bucket. I just want this done for now, but do other people just buy new headlight mounting rings and it hasn't been mentioned?

I'll see if I can grab some pictures tonight, but man what a difference between the two lamps side by side.
 
Sorry you had to go thru all of that.. I wound up with a pair of 7 inch GROTE LED headlight that fits in the buckets with no modifications.

And yes, the light is way nicer even than my Bosch Quartz were, and WAY less amp draw.
 
Here's a couple of pics. Sorry my phone camera is terrible and the wagon is so close to my Saturn. It was late and I got a letter from the HOA this week about the Dart being on the street.

Here's just how full and white the lamps look head on.
KIMG0060.jpg


Here's a shot of the light spread. The lamps aren't aimed yet. One of my neighbors is a mechanic at a nearby import dealership so I'm going to see if he can save me the hassle of finding a good spot to do it manually by myself.

KIMG0061.jpg
 
Do you have chrome or black?
I just ordered a pair of chromes yesterday for my '67, I hope I don't have to cut stuff.
 
pauly v.100 said:
Do you have chrome or black?
I just ordered a pair of chromes yesterday for my '67, I hope I don't have to cut stuff.
Click to expand...
Chrome. I don't know if the buckets changed much over the years. I'd be surprised if they did. I ended up using my rotozip with a metal cutting disc on the second one. I don't think a dremel would have got it done. I can pull it back out and take a few pictures of you want.
 
Well it looks like I'll be cutting too. The hole in the back of the headlight bucket is 3 3/8" and the rough diameter of the heat sink on the back of the speaker headlight is 3 9/16". I'll start by cutting out the outside edge of the flat area around the hole at the back of the bucket, seen here.

IMAG1012.jpg
 
That was my initial thought as well, but I just bent it with pliers for the clearance. That's when I figured out that the heatsink was contacting the bucket at an earlier point. I ended up cutting it about as pictured in this edit. I actually ended up almost being too close still and having to go back and cut it more.

IMAG1012.jpg
 
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